WORTH IT NOT WORTH IT – GLUTEN FREE BREAD

What the hell is the deal with gluten free baking, huh? There are always like a trillion ingredients, the process takes damn hours, and nothing ever turns out the way it’s supposed to. My repeated fails inspired me to sign up to a 3-week gluten free baking class and – WOW! – did I learn A LOT. The first exciting thing that I learned is that I have been measuring ingredients for baking the wrong way my entire life, so basically failing from Step #1. Here’s a golden baking nugget: The way to measure any/all flours when baking is to spoon the flour into your measuring cup. When the measuring cup is heaping, use a knife to slide the excess flour off of the top (hopefully back into the flour bag). Don’t bang the flour to pack it down, or smoosh in lots of flour, or anything like that. Just spoon and swipe. HA!

[peekaboo_content]

This recipe comes from my class and was taken from America’s Test Kitchen. If you are not familiar withAmerica’s Test Kitchen (ATK), then I highly recommend buying one of their books or their magazine (and no, they are not paying me to say this – I wish!- I just genuinely like them). ATK are easy to read/use and they actually explain why recipes work, so you learn how to cook rather than just blindly following instructions. ATK have an entire book titled How It Can Be Gluten Free and it’s pretty badass. If you are celiac, or someone in your family is, and you don’t have this book, then I think you are missing out. Bread, pie, scones, tarts, pancakes – it’s all in there and they’re delicious, and fluffy, and you won’t miss carbs anymore ever again.

I know the ingredient list (see link below) looks intimidating, but if you order all of it on Amazon it can be delivered to your door without any much work from you (that’s what I did). This bread does take some time to make, and it did test my patience as far as time…but it’s a pretty fun process AND it’s rewarding because the loaf is way better than the cardboard tasting stuff you buy at the store. The resulting slices are moist and yummy and have a texture a little bit like pound cake (which I think is a great thing).

My 3 pieces of advice with this recipe are:

1) Be sure you read through the directions before you dive in.

2) Add a little extra salt.

3) Have your mise en place ready! Trust me, it will save you some hair pulling and stress.

VERDICT: Worth It.

[/peekaboo_content][peekaboo]Content [/peekaboo]

The recipe can be found here. You’ll see that it calls for the ATK Gluten Free flour blend, which can be foundhere. The the flour blend seems like too much work a substitute is King Arthur Gluten Free Flour.

Join the conversation

About Elettra

Elettra Wiedemann is the founder of Impatient Foodie, a food site that navigates her desire to marry Slow Food ideals with the realities of fast paced, urban life. Within just a few months of launch in summer of 2014, Impatient Foodie was featured in numerous publications including Vogue, The New York Post, The Daily Mail (UK) Elle US, Elle China, Yahoo Food, Yahoo News, Madame Figaro, and Racked, ManRepeller, and Food & Wine Magazine.